


burn down the walls because babe i'm a fool for you

by victoriousscarf



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1950s, Alternate Universe - 1950s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Civil Rights Movement, Historical Homophobia, Multi, historical racism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 19:53:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13934133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/victoriousscarf/pseuds/victoriousscarf
Summary: T'Challa knew he had a cousin, but only because he overheard his father talking to his mother when he was not supposed to.“Are you certain this is best?” Ramonda asked, when T'Challa was supposed to be watching Shuri, but she was already asleep so he had come down the hallway in the hopes of sitting with his parents for a while.“N'Jobu made his choice already,” T'Chaka said, and T'Challa stopped, because he knew the name, though he did not know the uncle that was supposed to be attached to it.





	burn down the walls because babe i'm a fool for you

**Author's Note:**

> I went back and forth a few times because one thing that makes Black Panther so amazing is that T'Challa and Wakanda are so untouched by the racist issues of the past... but I really wanted to put Erik and T'Challa in dialog with the conflict that like, inspired them, and I was super haunted by Chadwick Boseman playing Thurgood Marshall last year. It's sorta like the conflict Sisko has in Deep Space 9's Badda Bing Badda Boom--what the past should have been (Wakanda and being untouched by racism) vs acknowledging what the past was (which is here an au where both T'Challa and Erik are steeped in racism) I've made better (worse?) fic decisions before.

T'Challa knew he had a cousin, but only because he overheard his father talking to his mother when he was not supposed to.

“Are you certain this is best?” Ramonda asked, when T'Challa was supposed to be watching Shuri, but she was already asleep so he had come down the hallway in the hopes of sitting with his parents for a while.

“N'Jobu made his choice already,” T'Chaka said, and T'Challa stopped, because he knew the name, though he did not know the uncle that was supposed to be attached to it.

“But he has a son,” Ramonda said. “Should we not reach out to him?”

“No,” T'Chaka said and T'Challa frowned in the darkness of the hallway.

“Do we not have a responsibility to him?” Ramonda asked. “You and Zuri, you make the world so simple but that boy is alone and—”

“We have to protect our own children,” his father said and T'Challa found himself turning the ring around his finger, the ring that belonged to his grandfather, that his father only started to let him wear occasionally.

“The boy is not at fault for what the father did.”

“I cannot,” T'Chaka said, and T'Challa turned, slipping back down the hallway in the dark, uncertain he wanted to hear anymore, learn anymore.

He never heard his cousin mentioned again, or his uncle. Not when his father spoke, not when his mother was silent and watchful, and not when Zuri came around after dinner, full of stories and advice. It just became a part of the fabric of his life, that he had a cousin he never knew and probably never would.

He did wonder sometimes, what sort of man the boy might have grown up into. If they might ever meet. If he was a good man, somewhere out there, where T'Challa had never seen him.

But for the most part, there was more than enough to keep T'Challa's attention, and as the years passed, he wondered about his cousin less and less.

-0-

T'Challa was staring at the wall more than the singer or the bar in front of him, chin in one hand and mustering vague smiles for everyone who passed him by.

Another day had passed, another case lost, another day of struggles that seemed to be going in circles. Some days he found himself starting to wonder if they were ever going to make progress, but it through the courts or by some other means. The NAACP insisted they were on the verge of a breakthrough against segregation, having chipped away at college admissions but they lost as much, if not more, than they won.

“You look lonely,” someone said and T'Challa turned his head, finding a man he didn't recognize leaning against the bar beside him.

“Do I?” he asked, with half a smile, tilting his head to one side. “It's too early to be lonely.”

“Ah,” the man said, and his smile was easy on his face, like it was easy. “And your voice is even prettier than I imagined on the way over.”

T'Challa blinked, staring at him in obvious confusion for a moment too long. “Excuse me?”

“Can I buy you a drink?” the man asked, still smiling and T'Challa really should have gotten up and walked away. It had been a long day, and a stranger who said such things was honestly the last thing he needed on his plate.

Instead he shifted slightly, to see him better and said, “If you like.”

“I would like,” the man said and T'Challa felt something like a shiver go through him. “As I said, despite your protests, you look lonely.”

“And how do you figure that?” T'Challa asked, even as the stranger sat down beside him.

“Because you're known here,” the man said, leaning against the bar and facing T'Challa. “Everyone greets you, and you greet them, but you're not talking with any of them. Your smile is strained, and you're sitting as far away from people as you can.”

“That's... perceptive,” T'Challa settled for. “So why did you come over then? It seems I wish to be left alone more than I am lonely.”

“Well, I'm new to these parts,” the man said, and T'Challa's eyes flickered over him quickly, the coat that had been carefully mended but obviously worn, the way his muscles moved under his shirt. “And I thought I'd take my chance. You seem the type to be usually surrounded by people.”

“You think yourself quite the reader of people,” T'Challa remarked.

“Am I wrong?” the man asked, arching his brows and T'Challa bit the inside of his cheek.

“Perhaps not,” he allowed as the bartender finally made his way back to their side of the bar, the stranger easily offering to buy T'Challa's drink.

Every time the stranger shifted and his knee bumped into T'Challa's, he started counting all the minutes he should have left ago.

“So what do you do, then?” the stranger asked. “That has you so well known and yet so off key this evening?”

“Law,” T'Challa said, and something passed over the stranger's face, not disgust or disapproval, but something closer to resentment, before his smile was back. “And what about you, that brings you to these parts?”

“These parts being Harlem,” the stranger said. “Every black person comes to these parts eventually, don't they?”

“No,” T'Challa said, dropping his eyes, because sometimes he had gone to the South, heart in his throat the whole time, looking at the sharecroppers and those so poor they could not afford shoes, let alone a visit to Harlem. “Not every black person.”

The stranger was almost smiling at him again, the corner of his mouth quirked. “Those of means, then,” he said. “We come when and how we may.”

“Do you like it here?” T'Challa asked.

“Haven't had the time to make up my mind yet,” the man said.

“So what do you do?” T'Challa repeated. “You hadn't answered.”

“Write, sometimes,” the man said. “Preach, perhaps.”

“A priest?” T'Challa asked, dubiously.

“Nah, I leave that up to those with too much faith and not enough sense,” the man said. “I preach for the betterment of black folk, and a world that might come from their acknowledgment of their own worth.”

“So a rabble rouser then,” T'Challa said, but he found himself returning the stranger's smiles, and the stranger laughed, his knee knocking against T'Challa's as he turned, leaning both his elbows on the bar next to T'Challa.

“Yeah, alright, I suppose so.”

“I suppose Harlem is as good as any place for that,” T'Challa said, and the countdown was still going in his head.

“It's a place, anyway,” the stranger said, and T'Challa took a drink from the glass that had been set in front of him without him even noticing, because his throat felt dry. “And how goes your,” and the stranger waved a hand in a circle in front of his face. “Law.”

T'Challa closed his eyes, feeling the long slow pull of exhaustion all over again. “It goes,” he said.

“And what do you do, exactly, as a lawyer?” the man asked.

“Lose, mostly,” T'Challa said, his fingers tightening on the glass before he forced his hand to relax.

“Is that why you're in here tonight, alone and morose?” the stranger asked, and he leaned over, bumping their shoulders together and leaving their legs pressed along side each other. It was warm and constant and he was giving off signs even T'Challa couldn't miss. It was brazen and rash and they were not in the place for it, but T'Challa hadn't pulled away either, hadn't left or protested or even simply pulled his own leg back. There was no subtlety to this, no hidden signal, no marker of the man's desire that could be seen and then promptly ignored. There was just heat, a smile, and dark eyes, and T'Challa should have left fifteen minutes ago.

“Yes,” he said and his voice had gone rough while he tried to process the warmth against his side.

The stranger blinked before his smile changed, more pleased, almost predatory. “What did you lose on?”

“Do you really want to know?” T'Challa asked, arching a brow at him and that was a signal that T'Challa felt almost faint for giving. It was one thing to allow, another to almost challenge the man. To ask him directly what he wanted and live with the answer.

But he looked so pleasantly pleased and T'Challa was bone tired of all the fights he had fought and lost and lost and how much losing could any man endure before running up a white flag and walking away. He wanted to sink down into another's heat, to forget for a moment the next case that was already awaiting him, and instead only to be desired so blatantly.

“Well,” the man said, one finger tracing the rim of his own glass. “I think we've established my desire to rouse the rabble. I would like to hear of course what cases take your attention as an upstanding citizen of Harlem. However,” and he shifted, the movement of his warmth sending a bolt through T'Challa. “Yeah, maybe you're right. I'd much rather get your name.”

“My name?” T'Challa asked. “What about _your_ name?”

“Erik,” the man said easily. “Erik Stevens.”

T'Challa wondered if it was a fake name or if the man truly was that foolish, to throw around his desire and then give his real name.

“Now, do I get yours or should I buy you another drink first?”

“T'Challa,” he answered, and didn't have time to say his full name when Erik pulled away abruptly. “Is something—” But he didn't have time to finish that question either, before Erik slammed money down on the bar and left, his spine stiff and straight and leaving T'Challa staring in mute shock after him.

It was for the best, he told himself, still frozen in surprise. It had been foolish, to entertain such advances so long. To allow the stranger to so brazenly touch him—it was better he had walked away.

But T'Challa couldn't figure out why. Why he had chosen that precise moment to just leave. He wasn't that well known of a lawyer, especially beyond the local. He was no Thurgood Marshall, traveling up and down the South and up to the North and anywhere else a case called him. He was young still, working his way up inch by inch, loss by loss.

And the thought haunted him.

-0-

It would have, perhaps, been better if things had stayed that way.

Life moved on after all, more cases dropped in his lap as the school segregation case inched its way toward the supreme court, everyone holding their breath and not wanting to hope.

So he worked, and he visited his mother and his sister, and sometimes his father's grave when they all had the time to go together.

It was on one such day when he spotted the stranger again, Erik, as he walked with his mother and sister. “And you have to come,” Shuri said, but T'Challa had stopped, because the stranger was looking at him, his eyes flickering toward his mother and that made something like fear curl in T'Challa's chest. “Brother, are you listening to me?”

“I, no,” T'Challa admitted, and Ramonda turned her head to follow his gaze, frowning as Erik started walking toward them. The fear changed again, and he wondered if that flirting had been a set up, some sort of trick, because Erik wasn't even looking at him.

He was looking straight at his mother.

“Do you know whoever that is?” Ramonda asked, and T'Challa considered the merits of just taking off down the street, instead of allowing Erik to reach them. But a traitorous part of him wanted to know what Erik wanted, what the other night and now this had even been about.

“Not particularly,” he said.

“He seems to know you,” Shuri remarked from behind his shoulder.

“I,” T'Challa started, and when Erik reached them, he still wasn't bothering to pay any attention to T'Challa.

He tipped his chin up, and his smile looked anything except like an actual smile. “Hi, auntie,” he said, looking straight at Ramonda's eyes. “Nice day for a family gathering, isn't it?”

T'Challa barely felt his mother grab his arm, or hear Shuri's surprised squeak, because he could only stare at Erik in the same mute shock as he had when Erik had walked away so abruptly.

That, he supposed, helped to answer the sort of person his cousin was.

 


End file.
